Rebecca Henderson

So, remember how I mailed all my boxes of books from Texas to Washington earlier this month?

I was so proud that I mailed the boxes as media mail and spent a lot (A LOT) less than I was expecting. As long as the box only contains books, cds, dvds — nothing that qualifies as first class mail — you get a special super cheap rate.

And as I’ve found out, your boxes may or may not actually arrive at their destination. Only 9 out of my 11 made it. My mom has received notices in the mail that one of the boxes ended up at the dead letter office in Dallas, one in Seattle. Somehow the paper with my address became separated from the box, and I didn’t put another paper with the address inside the box. (Do people actually do that? I guess I’ve proven that they should.) So these two sad boxes of books are sitting there, dead, unidentified, possibly lost forever.

The box in Dallas, I have no idea at this point which books are in it. The one in Seattle, I can remember a few. I’m hoping I remember enough of them to fill out a claim form — and I’m hoping that I wrote my name inside the flyleaf of a few of them as proof of identification.

One of the books I know is in the Seattle box is Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. When I first read it a few years back, it challenged me to savor the words, sentences, paragraphs I read. Read good writers as a form of study, as a way to hone my craft. Read to absorb what is lovely, what is powerful, what is effective about great writers’ use of the English language.

When I was working on difficult passages in my manuscript about Lydia, I would pick up the novel Sold by Patricia McCormick. Her subject matter is different from mine, but I’m inspired by her insight into the mind and heart of a young girl who left her village. She helps me know how to show, not tell, the choicest details.

Sometimes when I’m working on an essay, I’ll look at something by Donald Miller or Annie Dillard. Lately the poetry of Wendell Berry gets my creative wheels turning, even if I’m not working on poetry. Just mulling over the words, their sounds, their meanings helps me think more like I am truly a great writer myself.

Hopefully my books aren’t really dead, either in Dallas or Seattle.

Postscript: After writing this, I sorted through a few of the boxes in my living room and found Reading Like a Writer. Which is good news for that book — it’s not dead. But bad news for my memory — am I going to be able to list correctly any of the other books for the claim form?

I didn’t know what a beta reader was until a few months ago, and now I suddenly need them.

Beta readers are the people who read a manuscript with an eye for giving constructive criticism to the writer at a later stage of the draft process. Each writer may be looking for different types of feedback, whether it be general or specific. Some may ask their beta readers to proofread for grammar and punctuation. Others, like me, need help with the broader picture of the story.

I’m a pretty compulsive proofreader, and I cringe to think of asking people to read something of mine with typos. I would rather fix those mistakes myself and get help with the things that are more difficult for me to see because of my personal connection to the story.

For this draft of my current manuscript (the young adult novel I’ve written based on my friend in China), I’ve enlisted a few beta readers to go over my novel and answer questions along these lines: Do you notice any inconsistencies? Are there characters you want to know more about? How do you feel about the descriptions of the setting? Is it enough? Do you want more? Are there sections where you find yourself thinking “this is dumb” or “I’m bored” or “I don’t want to keep reading”? How do you feel about the ending?

I hear that some people connect with other writers through Twitter or blogs or wherever and help each other out as beta readers. I considered that, but when it came down to making a decision, I felt like I knew enough people already who I trusted to give me good feedback. My mom is not one of those people. She is reading the book (or at least I gave her a copy under coercion — now that you made me hand it over, are you actually reading it, Mom?), but since she pretty much loves every word I’ve ever written, I didn’t think she was the best candidate to give honest criticism as a beta reader.

My readers are in Washington, New York, Oklahoma, West Virginia. Some are adults, some are teens. Some have known me for years, some have just met me. Some know China well, some have never visited. I think I’ve got a good mix.

Now that the book is in the hands of others, I’m feeling the anxiety of not knowing what to expect and of fearing the worst. To me, the worst is that the book is boring. I know that I have technical skill in putting together sentences that work. But this is the first time for me to put together a story this big, and I just hope that I got all the components of a good story right.

With all of my excitement over my trip to Oregon and the Badger Mountain 15k, I didn’t post an update on my book progress in March, as I should have.

The good news is…drum roll…I now have a second draft of the first book in the young adult novel series I am writing.

To catch you up, I finished the first draft in November last year, spent the holidays with my family, moved to Washington in January, and set a goal to finish the first round of revisions by April 1. You can read a more thorough recap of my writing progress here.

The first three or four chapters of revisions were brutal. It involved more restructuring, rearranging, and flat out rewriting than I had envisioned. February was a big freelance month for me, so I got a bit bogged down in other projects and was feeling pretty discouraged about my progress with the novel. At one point I decided there was no way I would meet my April 1 goal, it was all hopeless anyway, why am I even bothering to write this book in the first place, I should probably just quit.

But then somewhere around Chapter 7 or 8 of the 14 chapters in the book, I realized that I had finally hit a writing stride in the original writing process. (If you’ll remember, the first version didn’t even have chapters — what was I thinking?! Putting in the chapter divisions was my first task in revising this monster.) The last several chapters were much tighter, better written, needed much less revising. I ended up finishing the second draft at the end of the third week in March, just in time to drive to Seattle and pick up Erin for our Oregon trip. Perfect.

The second draft is also 50 pages longer than the first, which makes me happy. I fleshed out characters and scenes and feel much more satisfied with this version. Still not completely satisfied, but at least I no longer think I should just quit and never type another word.

Next step: one more pass through the entire manuscript on my own, then I’ll send it along to two or three readers with critical eyes to give me their opinions. Hopefully by this summer (June? July? August?) it will be polished and ready to be seen by someone in the publishing world.

A few days before I left on my drive up here to Washington, I sat down with a few Chin refugees from Burma to interview them about how they ended up in Texas. I spent the day listening to their stories, typing notes, and thinking over the experience of conducting these interviews. During my last few years in Yunnan, part of my work involved driving a truck to remote villages along the Burma border to interview indigenous peoples about their language and culture and religion. I absolutely loved sitting in their homes and asking questions and hearing their stories. Now here I was, after a 90 minute trip through rush hour traffic in Dallas-Fort Worth that required a different set of driving skills than the mountains of Yunnan, talking to young people from the other side of the Burma border from where I had lived. A strange circle of events, wouldn’t you say?

My interviews in Texas were for a project I’m working on about the persecution of the Chin people by the Burmese government, told through the stories of several young refugees now relocated to the U.S. Listening to the things these kids went through, first in their villages, then as they endured the dangers of escape, and later in the terrible limbo of undocumented status in Malaysia, I was aware that they were entrusting me with something precious. They were telling me the horrific details not as a means of shocking me, but in the hopes that something good could come of others hearing their story.

I sat there in Starbucks with one guy, a skinny 20-year-old in jeans and a t-shirt, while he told me about being shot at and beaten, about surviving in a tiny boat on the ocean. I was overwhelmed with the absurdity of hearing this harrowing account while sitting there all warm and cozy and safe with our lattes.

And I was convinced once again of both the importance of telling stories and that helping people tell their stories is something I can do well. I’m not saying that to puff myself up or to try to sound important — I say it because it’s good for us to find the things we do well, and then to, um, do them well.

So for me right now that means getting up each morning, turning on my laptop, spreading pages of notes and drafts on the table around me, and telling Lydia’s story, the story of the Chin in Burma, and the story of how food insecure preschoolers in Wake County, North Carolina, are getting their tummies filled and learning healthy eating habits.

Since I started this blog in the summer of 2008, the focus and the audience has changed somewhat.  What started as a way for me to keep my friends and family posted on life and work in China has evolved into a combination of my travel diary for this year of transition, a chronicle of my progress in writing my first novel, and just a general outlet for musings on books I’m reading or anything else that is on my mind.  The stats page for my site tells me that the number of readers has gone up a bit over the months (with a huge spike last week when two of the artists from the Love Tells the Story tour tweeted a link to my review on Twitter)—though, don’t get me wrong, this is still a rather small-time blog.  I’m OK with that.  Slowly and steadily I’m finding an audience for what I write, and I’m enjoying the time I have to focus more on writing than I ever have in my life.

Now that I’ve finished my first draft (you can read about that in “Happy but not Satisfied”), I thought it would be good to post links to a few past blog entries to recap what I’m doing during this year and how that came about.  Some of you have read these before, but others may have missed them or may be new to the blog.  Rather than rewriting a new summary of it all, it’s easier to point you in the direction of what’s already out there.

Recent Silence First mention of my wanting to write a series of books on Lydia’s life growing up in Yunnan.

Finishing Well The best explanation I’ve posted about how I came to the decision to leave China and start writing full time.

What to do with our talents A personal favorite essay, about glorifying God by using and enjoying our talents, which is my hope for this year and all my years.

The End of Idle Chatter How I stopped talking about writing and started (gasp!) writing.

Things I’ve Learned So Far About Networking A list of ways online networking has helped me (or not) in the process of telling Lydia’s story.

Texas to Alaska Why I went to the arctic to work on my book this summer, and why I am going to Washington in January.

Other People’s Thoughts: Rewriting Writing vs Having Written.

Alaska to Texas A summary of my two months writing in the arctic.

About Changes A clarification of my purpose in this year of travel and writing.

Happy but not Satisfied Celebrating the finish of my very rough first draft.  Or my very first rough draft.

Yesterday morning, I typed those two lovely words I’ve been dreaming of for months: THE END.  My first draft of the young adult novel based on my friend Lydia is complete.  It is a rough draft, indeed, but it is a completed draft.  And for that, I am happy.

I am happy, but I am not satisfied.  Several people I’ve talked to in the last couple of days have asked the inevitable question: “So, what’s next?”  Months of rewriting and revisions, that’s what’s next.  My goal when I started typing the first page of this draft on July 8 (just four months ago!) was to get the basic story and dialog down without spending too much time over-thinking tiny details.  Just let the story flow, just type, just see where things go.

Meaning:  I have a bit of a mess on my hands now.  I have 220 double-spaced pages…and no chapter divisions.  How could I divide the story into chapters when I didn’t even know for sure where it was going or how fast?  I have some very clunky dialog, but at least I have the framework of the conversations that are important to the story.  I have minor characters who are very likely called one name in the first half and a different name in the second half.  I have Chinese and Bulang words that I haven’t taken the time to translate or explain.  I have underdeveloped antagonists and overdeveloped cultural descriptions.

But I know all those things—knew them as I went along.  I decided it would be easier for me to go back and fix things once I had a completed draft than it would be to get bogged down in correcting or elaborating or cutting away, only to get frustrated because my word count was moving too slowly, and risk getting overwhelmed and never finishing.  I have more than a little editorial tendency in me, and I’m excited at the thought of attacking this draft with an eye for sharpening what isn’t strong enough, getting rid of what doesn’t work, and generally repairing this huge mess.  I made tons of notes to myself as I wrote, and I’ll start going through and rewriting very soon.

One thing I’m more than satisfied with is my ending.  I’ve struggled with writing solid conclusions since I was in grade school, and all along this process I’ve worried about how to have an emotionally satisfying ending to this chapter in Lydia’s story, but leave things open to tell the next part in a second book.  Just in the last couple of days, the ideas started flowing, and I absolutely love the ending I wrote.  Now I don’t face these revisions with the dread that comes from knowing my ending needs a major overhaul.  Fine tuning, yes.  Major overhaul, no.

I hope to finish up drafts two, three, four, however many it takes, by next summer and begin sending out query letters to agents soon after that.  In the meantime, I’m also working to build up a freelance writing business.  Lots of learning and writing and submitting and waiting and trying again, and I’m loving pretty much every minute of it.

About Changes

I have updated the “About” page on my site as a way of clarifying what I’m doing during this year of transition in my life.  Maybe no one else needed any clarification.  But it’s good for me to think through and put into words what this year is about:

“I’m too old to be finding myself and too young to be having a midlife crisis.  So I’m calling this a year of taking a faith-filled risk.  A year of learning what it takes to be a writer.

This year is really about the writing.  It’s not about eating or praying or loving.  I’ll do those things (the way the Bible talks about them) no matter what.  And hopefully after this year I’ll have learned some ways to make writing a part of my life no matter what.”

Progress

Another two weeks of working on the first draft of the novel are behind me, and overall I got a lot of good work done.  There were some really, really good days where I had a higher word count than I could have imagined—and there were a few really not good days where I felt rather dry.  But in the end I can look back and see progress, and that’s what counts.  Progress in the work and lessons learned.

Summer ends quickly in the arctic. By early August clouds obscured the sun, and rainy days brought a close to my time spent on the tundra or the beach. For the last three weeks I got more writing done than I ever have in my life.

One desire for this year off work has been to learn more about myself as a writer, to push myself and grow and give myself a chance to complete major projects that I’ve just never had the time to work on in more than small spurts. I wrote about that in my “Texas to Alaska” post before coming up here.

The weeks in Alaska have been wonderful in seeing that desire fulfilled. I came here with the vague goals of “nail down the main storyline” and “start writing the book.” I’m leaving with over 30,000 words of the first draft—about half of what I anticipate the total length to be—and a solid outline of what the second half will look like.

The process of getting to this point hasn’t been what I expected. I didn’t sit down and write a complete, detailed outline before fleshing out the setting and dialogue and beautifully sketched characters. The process was much more fluid. I brainstormed a very basic outline. I wrote a couple thousand words. I outlined more. I wrote a couple dozen more pages. I scratched out half the outline. I wrote a new opening scene. I added a bit more to the outline and tried to write the next couple of scenes. I gave myself a headache for five days straight because my own book was boring me to tears and I couldn’t imagine anyone else ever wanting to read it. I moved from the couch to my bed to the downstairs couch to the couch of the lady I was housesitting for. I stared at the wall or the back of my eyelids for hours, begging my poor creative self to come up with a way to make this thing more interesting, have a little tension, be building towards a climax with even a smidgen of excitement. I decided to forget it, just write the next scene, let the ideas flow and trust that the storyline would eventually come together—well, that’s what I told myself, but I didn’t fully believe it would actually happen that way.

But it did. It wasn’t easy, it’s still not finished, but the ideas are there. The potential for a climactic scene that resolves the tension of the previous 150 pages definitely exists now, where it did not exist in days and weeks previous.

That’s all I wanted out of this time in Alaska. To get to this point, to understand more what it will take for me to write this book and possibly others. I’m happy to see what it’s going to take and to have a sense that I can do this, can actually make it work.

I’m leaving for Texas today, a month early. Plans change, especially when you’ve set out to spend a year flying by the seat of your pants. In many ways my time in Kotzebue has been all I could have dreamed of for a summer in Alaska. Took a flight up the Kobuk River in a bush plane. Helped pull in salmon nets.  Saw an arctic tern.  Picked blueberries on the tundra. Ate Alaskan king crab fresh from the sea. Camped on the beach to watch the sun set after midnight. Drove a Honda 4-wheeler around town. And made memories with great friends who have included me in their family this past two months.

But the 4-wheeler gets old when it rains for days on end, and I miss my car and so many other conveniences that just can’t be found here in the arctic. You’d think that after 10 years in rural Asia I’d not have a problem going without convenience—but I guess I just wasn’t prepared to jump back into that lifestyle so soon after returning to America. That’s not the reason I’m going back to Texas early, but it’s the reason that going back early is perfectly fine with me.

So, I’ll be in Fort Worth for a few weeks. Next stop after that: Wyoming.

“Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour.  Do this despite fear.  For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure.  As you follow the quest for stories told with meaning and beauty, study thoughtfully but write boldly.  Then, like the hero of the fable, your dance will dazzle the world.”  Robert McKee, Story

I will be honest and admit I haven’t read the book this quote comes from.  But I have the quote in my little file of passages about writing that challenge and inspire me, and today I’m using it to remind myself to have courage and keep writing.

Total word count so far on the first draft of the first book in the series on Lydia:  10,498.

Goal:  55-60,000

Two years of blogging, as of today.  173 posts.  Two continents.  Many lessons learned—at least for me, I don’t know about you.

I began the blog during the early days of helping friends start up Mountain Cafe in Jinghong, China.  Too many odd happenings and funny anecdotes throughout each day behind the counter of the coffee shop to pass up the opportunity to post it all online.  From there the blog morphed into a place for me to tell stories of village trips, report on my progress in learning a minority language, discuss the progress from cafe to coffee growing.  I posted cute conversations with waitresses and customers and village kids.  I wrote thoughts from my travels through Yunnan, Burma, and Laos, including the road trip where I ended up sideways in a ditch with my elbow sticking through the glass of the truck’s passenger-side window.

When my plans for coming back to the States began to take shape, when the idea of writing Lydia’s story became more and more persistent and I couldn’t ignore the story any longer, I worked on blog entries to explain my decision process, to express clearly to myself and others why I was making this transition.  The blog has become an important part of the way I interact with friends and family.

Keeping up with regular posts throughout each week has helped me grow in discipline as a writer.  Being able to write about topics apart from Lydia’s story has given me a good outlet, as well, for pieces that come a bit more naturally to me.  Developing a novel, working on a character arc, practicing dialogue—this is all new to me, and it’s difficult.  Writing for the blog is a way that I can keep my confidence up on those days when the novel overwhelms me.

It’s a good, good feeling today, looking back on two years of blogging.  Thanks for joining me here.